The Grand War
by Remus Crux
Summary: One shot. Rated M for violence and disturbing imagery, no sexual themes present. A young soldier limps through the trench he was left to die in during the Mevolent War, silently pondering the horrific scene around him after an attack by Lord Vile.


It was quiet. Eerily quiet. He was used to the sounds of gunfire, of energy blasts, of screams, anything. Bodies were scattered around him in the trench, accompanied by the squeaking of rats and the writhing of maggots and the stench. God, the stench. The stench of burnt flesh, blood, and decay, accompanied by the scorched meadows and rotten earth. He couldn't escape even if Mevolent's soldiers weren't somewhere out there, keeping a watch to make sure every member of his battalion was dead. His leg had been shot, leaving a gangrenous hole. He had nothing to burn it with and he had no desire to have maggots writhing inside of him. Besides, the smell of rot was already all around him. So he left it there, greenish and lifeless, as he attempted to limp his way through the trench. Mevolent's men had tried to take them, but they forced them back with minimal effort. Then, the Lord came. Not the good, Christian Lord, but Vile.

He had no idea why Vile spared him. Maybe he knew he was going to die anyway and didn't see the point in wasting his energy, but he wished Vile had taken him just to spare him from this agony. He climbed over the torn-apart carcasses of the nameless masses of young men sent to die in the name of stopping the Faceless Ones, contemplating everything. A sergeant had told him not to contemplate and that it would make everything worse for him, but that sergeant had had a hole blasted through his chest by an energy beam, so he took what he said with a grain of salt. Besides, what better did he have to do? No one was around, no one would come to rescue him, it was just him and the trench-turned-mass-grave he limped through. Would the Faceless Ones really be that bad in comparison? He had no idea. No one did, really. Everyone from that time was long dead, but they relied on what they left behind to judge their actions and the… things that existed back then. But it didn't matter at this point. Not to him, at least. He was a dying soldier, soon to join the bodies scattered around him like grim flowers in a sorrowful field.

Still, he limped on. It gave him some sort of purpose at least, and reminded him that he was still alive. Somehow. His stomach growled weakly, as if it knew its time was short but still craved life. He dug through his rations, moving it away from the rats that shared the trench with him, and found some long-since-stale bread and salted meat. He heard it crunch loudly as he took a bite, but he didn't care. It wasn't like anyone was here anyway.

The footsteps came from behind him, scaring him into bolting upright. It was a group of men in the outfits of elite Sanctuary soldiers, but different somehow. One of them, a stocky, muscular man, offered him a hand.

"Come on kid, I'll help you out," he commanded, a grim, yet somehow warm smile on his torn face. He tried, damn he tried, but his bastard of a leg stopped him from getting anywhere. He fell to the ground, curled up and whimpering while tightly clasping his leg, gritting his teeth against the pain. Another one of them, a gaunt man who was taller than the stocky man but less muscular, gently moved his hand away from the wound, exposing the rotting flesh.

"Shot. He's got gangrene," he muttered while turning to the stocky man, "Help me lift him out of here. He's not going to be able to climb out." He felt the men lifting him roughly, but he didn't care about the suddenness of the lift. He was thankful to be away from the rot, even if it was right next to him. The tall man grasped him from under his shoulders while the stocky man grabbed his legs and, with a signal from the tall man, started walking.

"I wasn't expecting to see anyone still living here, not after we heard that Vile got here before we knew he was even in the area," another one of them said, seemingly to no one, while they walked. He wasn't as tall as the gaunt man, but he walked with a bit of a spring in his step, which confused the young soldier.

"What's your name kid? I'd assume you have one at this point," the springy one asked, a gleam of friendliness in his eye.

"I- my name is Samuel, s-sir." He was surprised he could even talk, considering that he had recently only used his vocal chords to wail in pain.

"Samuel, that's a nice name. A classic. My name is Dexter Vex, and we're the Dead Men," the springy man, Dexter, explained. Sam felt his eyes threaten to pop out of his skull. The Dead Men had saved him. _The_ Dead Men. That's why their uniforms were so different. He would've talked to them more, learned more about how they found him, why _they_ were here in the first place, but he could feel exhaustion claim his body. He couldn't even remember the last time he had gotten proper sleep. Before he fell asleep, though, he opened his eyes to look at whatever he was facing. The ground, which he turned out to be facing towards, was still scorched, but he noticed a small, red flower growing in the field, unstained by blood or fire. He smiled slightly at the pure sight before his face went slack and everything went dark.


End file.
